the way to wailea

so we live on a mountain and we look at the sea.  and one day shiz says to me, "why don't we just walk right down there to the beach."  we look at a map and its about the same distance as we walk to the store, granted that's on a road and this is through grassy wilderness.  i was wanting to go for a hike anyways so yesterday we set off down the mountain, heading the way the crow flies if the crow were to go to the beach from here.

we hiked through some of the most serene, surreal country i've ever seen.  it's all these mystical, twisted trees with dusty yellow bark.  now mystical is a strange word to use to describe a tree, but these have the gnarly shape i imagine when i think of powerful trees that lead to other worlds.  there are of course rocks everywhere.  little chunks of old volcano.  i half expected to get down the hill to see that i'd worn the soles of my shoes clean off on the sharp stuff.  we saw a few deer.  one majestic buck all by himself and another small heard running along, maybe six or eight.  the deer are different here.  they stay spotted into adulthood and their antlers stay straight and furry.  

anyhow we hiked for about an hour and a half through three or four miles of this pristine beauty before butting into the back of a housing development.  we'd been on other people's property the whole time but suddenly you become very aware of yourself when you are on private property and you can see the person's backdoor.  so we had to skirt around the back of the house for a while before we found a spot scarce enough to jump over a little gate.   the sign on the gate said, "Private Property.  Keep out,"  but on the back side it didn't say nothin.  (to quote a forgotten verse from a well known Woody Guthrie song)

it took us another hour just to get out of this melee of houses, me writing down the name of all the streets we turned left, right, left on.  we'd planned to walk back up the mountain that afternoon.  we finally make it out to the main road, shiz and i have some dispute about rather to hike down the road or head towards the water.  we headed towards the water.  i had a feeling the kind of beach it would be as we walked past the condo resort type places reminiscent of those i went to with my family growing up.  when we finally reached the beach it was a crammed little cesspool of a place.  (ok so it's still in maui and looks out at a beautiful ocean, but it must rank up among maui's worst).  rather than an "ah we made it" it was more of a "look at the bloated-white tourist flesh."  the place had all the charm of a K-mart.  still a wonderful adventure of a day.  we hitched our way back across the island and up the mountain.  got home just before it got dark and started raining.